


A Pair of Popsicles

by oonaseckar



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel Adventures: Avengers, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Anachronism, Anger, Anger Management, Emotionally Repressed, Gen, M/M, museum piece
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:55:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21825538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: Steve isn't so sweet as all that.  He's repressing a lot.  A LOT.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	A Pair of Popsicles

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter title is Robert Frost.

The last thing Steve remembers is, is, is – the last thing he remembers is – It doesn't matter what he remembers. He's said goodbye to Peggy, now, and Bucky is lost and gone forevermore. He's freezing, frozen, the noise is unendurable in even this new body that seems designed to survive space and dinosaurs and his Mom's Irish stew, when he hits the water the cold takes him like he's nummy and it snaps him up and the lights go out –

xxx

The first thing people do, when Steve wakes up in a strange world, is they lie to him. The girl they have on him is good, she's almost convincing, but Steve's a soldier and a strategist and a leader of men, which means a judge of men, good and bad, honest and not. And he's spent a lot of time lying to women – even if only by tacit commission and by omission, by dancing and smiling and acting like maybe something's gonna happen when it's _never, not and no sirree._ He can tell when one's returning the compliment.

He breaks out, first order of the day. Nick Fury follows him, tracks him down – not that he knows that till the guy introduces himself, but. And he seems like a solid guy. Head of a government agency, however covert: Fury wouldn't lie to him, right? (He ought to know better, he _does_ know better: but there's what you _know_ , and there's what you _want_. He's adrift in another time, and he needs to grab something and hold tight. Anything.)

But when they want him up close and cosy, when they want him to join SHIELD and pal up with Tony Stark and move into the tower and play at _Captain America_ again, he says no. Dancing and selling pablum, propaganda to the masses, again? Telling America it's safe, because its favorite red white and blue plastic dolly has come to life again, taken out of the freezer?

“You have a role to fill, a service to perform for your country,” is what Nick tells him. “You have a life waiting for you, here in this century.”

Yeah, that's dandy, Steve thinks. Except that it's a life without Bucky, with no Peggy he can recognize, a life where half the Commandos got used up in combat, and the rest play checkers in the park and wear synthetic slacks and have Facebook pages with grandkids and shiny self-published copies of their memoirs. It's a too-much too-loud too-crazy life in a world that he doesn't recognize, that offers everything, a cornucopia. All barring the few things he values.

He says no. Actually he says 'fuck this' – for real, and his Mom would have blanched and smacked him for the language – and heads for the hills out of Fury's office, all over again.

Government property or not, they can't make him. They can't make him do a damn thing. Let 'em try. Maybe he's having a melt-down – he probably didn't actually have to start _yelling_ about it with Fury. It's not fair. He's so angry. But not with Fury, not really.

He doesn't come anywhere close to calming down until he finds he's sitting in a diner with a malted milk and a sundae in front of him, and he can't remember getting there. Not that he blacked out, but he was so angry it was all on autopilot. Yeah. He looks around and although everything's changed, he knows the place: he and Buck used to come here, drink thin black coffee and refills and refills and salivate over the menu. It must be family-owned – used to be the Spinettis who had it – because all these years, it's still here.


End file.
